A challenge that I have faced. What am I allowed to classify as a challenge? Something physical? Something mental? Even though I have gone through both, the physical is more powerful. 

When I was three, my mom stepped on my right ankle. I was in pain for days after that. Eventually my parents took me to the Emergency Room at Children's hospital. The doctors there gave me X-Rays, MRIs, almost every test they could imagine because they had no idea what was wrong with me. The X-Rays showed cloudy smoke surrounding my ankle joints. The unhealthy tissue swelled and made it almost impossible to walk. 

I was scheduled to be taken into surgery a month or so after to replace the unhealthy tissue with healthy ones. An unbearable pain was still shooting through my body. I wanted to scream, but I couldn’t. To make everything better, when I woke up from surgery, my back was on fire. I couldn’t get to the places to scratch them, so I had my mom do it for me. She opened the back of my hospital gown and saw a red rash and hives down my back. Turns out I am allergic to Vancomycin, an antiseptic to treat infections, and Chlorhexidine, a surgical scrub that you are cleaned with before surgery. 

Eventually, they diagnosed me with Arthritis. Which was very wrong. It took my doctors four years and two more surgeries to figure out what was going on in my body that was causing me so much pain. It turns out that I’m one in a million. 

CRMO stands for Chronic Recurrent Multifocal Osteomyelitis, I know it is a mouth full. I had to go see a specialist all the way in Iowa twice during second and third grade and every six months, I had to go see my Rheumatologist. Plus the daily medicine, eight prescribed pills, and two vitamins. 

Everybody thinks that by now, I am used to it. Everybody thinks that I have accepted it. In a way, I have, but not completely. I am still haunted by the pain of my misdiagnosis from early on, thinking, Maybe it really is bone cancer this time, asking myself when will I ever be normal again.

It’s funny isn’t it? How everybody wants to be different and unique, but everybody who is different and unique wants to feel normal. Normality seems to be a concept that ruins my life. Seeing myself in a different light than how others do, knowing that I will never be able to be like those girls at dance competitions who are hyper flexible and so talented because they are able to practice four days a week for four hours each day. Knowing that I will never be as good as them because of how my body reacts to the smallest pain. 

Feeling normal is crap. I have learned to embrace my differences. It is very hard sometimes, but having a one in a million condition can do that to you.